The development of university-based actuarial education in Canada
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Date
2017
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Уманський державний педагогічний університет імені Павла Тичини
Abstract
The paper is aimed at figuring out the current state of actuarial education
provided by Canadian universities tracing the peculiarities of its development and
concentrating mainly on the process of the University accreditation program
implementation. The academic novelty of the article lies in the fact that in national
comparative pedagogy it is the first attempt to analyze Canada`s university-based
actuarial education. Having studied the documents, we may conclude that the UAP
is a set of the criteria and requirements having fulfilled which a university is granted
the right to provide its actuarial students with the opportunity of exemption from
the professional exams set by the SOA and the CAS on their way to the ACIA or
FCIA designations. It is worth mentioning that in many ways Canada is the first
country in North America which is now actively trying to bring the profession of an
actuary into academic environment. The reasons for implementing such measures are
obvious: university settings open wide prospects for research activities as well as
provide more predictable route for becoming a qualified actuary as compared to its
alternative of going through the set of the exams established by the above mentioned
bodies. By integration of formal and informal actuarial education into a single
whole it is possible to strengthen the profession. However, the main obstacle on the
way to success of the UAP is the assumption that by shifting educational process to
universities we are reducing professional standards. Under such circumstances the
UAP policy is characterized by stringent selection criteria as for the syllabi, course
outlines, faculty members, minimum exemption grades etc.. The main of them can be
broadly summarized as follows. In order to be accredited a university has to provide
85 % coverage of the syllabus of the professional bodies, to have at least 4 full-time
faculties, one of them has to be a fellow of the CIA, rigid testing and examination
procedures are a must; for students to get the exemption, the grade on each of the
courses in question has to be not lower than «B» or higher. In order to figure out
whether a university satisfies the standards, lots of administrative bodies have been
created or engaged: the Eligibility and Education Council, the CIA, the Accreditation
committee, accreditation panels, appeal investigation panels etc. For the time being,
there are 11 universities which comply with the given requirements. Overall, the
UAP can be considered as a successfully implemented experiment.
Description
Keywords
Canada, actuary, actuarial education, UAP, CIA, exam exemptions, criteria for accreditation, accredited universities, evolution of actuarial education, introduction to the profession
Citation
Fursenko T. The development of university-based actuarial education in Canada / Tetiana Fursenko // Порівняльно-педагогічні студії. – 2017. – № 2. – С. 60–66.